Hey guys, I am from Latvia and our foreign minister yesterday signed ACTA in Japan. There are people protesting all over Europe!
I know spying on people is bad, but it seems that it will be increasingly harder to escape from that in the future!

But all of these things might have good vibe and influence on Linux and Open Source in general.
More and more people will start to use an open source alternatives to commercial software including OS and open source choice number one of which is Linux!

What do you, guys, think about this?

So just give up and accept our fate? No, thank you. Internet is our ultimate hope for the new kind of democracy and we should fight tooth and nail to prevent politicians and corporations from turning it into a walled garden, advanced version of a TV set, fully controlled by them.

These treaties are going to be terrible for open source since their ultimate aim is to turn us from creators into consumers.

(and frankly, if even by some magic it were good for Linux - but at the expense of Internet freedom - I'd give up Linux in a second)

I personally think that laws like these are misguided in concept. "Copyright" is already a well-defined and strongly-implemented concept in laws around the world. Copyright holders (including myself, BTW...) do not need a "goon squad" to adequately enforce our rights under existing law.

The root problem of these laws is that they seek to remove "the due process of law." In the United States, there are requirements that "you have to get a search warrant or an arrest warrant." In other words, "you have to wake up a Federal Judge in the middle of the night, and you have to convince him or her, before you can do it." This is a very important protection for the accused, who is "presumed innocent."

A judge is not going to need much convincing that any web-site which is chock full of obviously-stolen copyrighted material is illegitimate, nor that anyone and everyone who knowingly downloads from such a site is breaking copyright law. Yes, there are plenty of ways to do that, under existing law, without adding yet another chapter to it.

(Uh huh, if you "knew or should have known" that it was too good to be true, you broke the (existing...) law.)

Another obvious consideration, of course, is the very real possibility of using such a law for intentional abuse. It would be much too easy for me to "simply allege" that you have stolen something from me, either to shut you down outright (even though you actually didn't do anything wrong), or simply to make the situation so onerous, either for you or for your Internet Service Provider(s) or both, that you will be effectively "shut down." All without waking up a Federal Judge in the middle of the night. All without the "due process" of law. There has to be a "check," has to be a "balance." Otherwise, a law can wind up doing more harm than good, and it winds up being declared "unconstitutional" which means that it was just a gigantic waste of everybody's time.

I don't deny that there is a problem that is a serious issue to copyright holders ... like me ... but I don't think that these laws are the right solution. I do not think that they will actually work. Not at all. We just did MPAA in the United States, not ten years ago. The laws out there are already very strong and very well-defined. I don't think that there are any legitimate reasons to go down this draconian road, and I also think that this road is ripe with opportunities for illegitimate abuse which have nothing at all to do with the supposed objectives of the law. In fact, I fear that these objectives might well be merely pretexts for entities whose true objective is ... that abuse.

The proper time to deal with those concerns is before the laws are enacted. The concerns about abuse are widespread, and I think that those concerns are entirely justified.

The internet would not be the same if SOPA and the others are passed. The internet would be very dull if that happens.

I think Mandrake Linux's website would've been taken out and the guys extradited before they could type Mandriv......